Paul’s Desire – To Be Found in Jesus (Phil. 3:9)

This sermon was preached on 9/6/2013

Normally you can assess a person’s priorities by his or her interests. Some people have so many interests that they have no priorities – everything is of the same value to them. Others have a few interests that direct their lives, and sometimes they can be contradictory and cause problems for them. A few have one over-riding goal and that goal affects all that they do. Often they are prepared to do anything to achieve it and will not let anyone or any object stand in their way.

What kind of man was Paul? What were his interests and priorities? We can see from this passage in the Letter to the Philippians that he had one passion and that was a person called Jesus Christ. Jesus meant everything to Paul and he assessed everything in life regarding how it affected his relationship to Jesus Christ.

This relationship he had with Jesus did not make Paul solitary – indeed he was very much a people person. In fact, this letter was written to a group of people who valued Paul very highly because he had originally interacted very well with them. 

Nor did his relationship with Jesus make Paul selfish – in fact, he was under arrest in Rome because of his intense desire to serve other people, and this desire flowed out of his relationship with Jesus. 

Moreover, his relationship with Jesus did not make Paul surly – the letter he was writing when he said the words in our text is a letter that is full of references to joy and gladness. And we can also say that his relationship with Jesus did not make Paul scared, although there were many reasons in his life at that time which could have frightened him; nevertheless he was not apprehensive about the future, even although he knew it might cost him his life. His relationship with Jesus did not make Paul skeptical of what life was all about – indeed he had found the key that made life, wherever he was, meaningful. 

Further, his relationship with Jesus did not make Paul a secretive person – there are some people whom we do not know even when we have been acquainted with them for decades. Unlike such people, Paul was open and revealed himself, as he does here and tells us the kind of person he was. 

Again, we can say that his relationship with Jesus made Paul sensible – the relationship produced a type of lifestyle that was admirable. The relationship gave him the ability to provide wise answers to many difficult questions. Knowing Jesus did not make Paul slipshod, indifferent to how he spent his time. Nor did it make him indifferent to the consequences of his words and actions. 

His relationship with Jesus did not make Paul small in the eyes of others, although it did make him small in his own eyes. Because he saw the bigness of Jesus and the wonder of his kingdom, he was a satisfied man. We live in a day in which so much is available, yet people are more dissatisfied.

If we were to ask Paul to explain what Jesus meant to him he would have several ways of describing it. He could have looked at it from the point of view of becoming a child of God and joining the same family in which Jesus is the Elder Brother. Or he could have considered the meaning of becoming a disciple, with Jesus as the Teacher. Paul could also have used illustrations to highlight aspects of the relationship, with Jesus as the Shepherd and Paul as one of the flock, or with Jesus as the Vine and Paul as one of the branches.

Here Paul uses monetary references to stress what Jesus meant to him – he uses the ideas of loss and gain. We can imagine him having a ledger with loss and gain columns on a page, and in the loss column he writes ‘all things’ and in the profit column he writes ‘Jesus’. With regard to each of them, he does not have to write anything else because both are comprehensive in their meaning. I suppose we could illustrate it by saying that in the loss column we write ‘total bankruptcy’ and in the profit column we write ‘the riches of Jesus’. So it is not surprising that Paul says that he wants to be found in Jesus. It is like asking a person in a secure bank if he would want to have his assets somewhere else.

Of course, when Paul says that he wants to be found in Christ he is also saying that at one time he was not in Christ. Before he was found, he must have been lost. So I want us to think about the process of his being lost and found.

When was Paul lost?

We can answer this question by saying that it was before he met Jesus on the Damascus road, perhaps the most famous conversion event in history. It has become part of everyday language, with people describing a radical change of direction as ‘a Damascus Road experience’. But what was Paul doing before he met Jesus? He tells us in our verse – he was trying to put together a righteousness of his own that was based on his own ability to keep God’s commandments that were revealed to Israel in a special way. Paul was trying to fill in the profit column on his sheet. And he was very dedicated in his pursuit, so dedicated that no one could ever accuse him of forgetting that focus. Yet try as he might, as he tells us elsewhere about his covetous desires, he could not change himself on the inside. It was not too difficult for him to put together outward behaviour – he had the inner drive to do so. What he could not do was get rid of his wrong thoughts. So Paul was lost in two ways – he was lost in the sense that he was separate from God and he was making a loss in his attempts to provide a sufficient standing with God based on his own good works.

Who was looking for him?

Fortunately for Paul, Someone was looking for him. The One who had his eye on Paul we can call the Banker from heaven because he wanted to give a large bank account to Paul. He wanted to share his own account with the wayward and frustrated Saul of Tarsus. Paul’s problem was that he could not travel to the Bank, but the solution was that the Banker could his Son and through him come to Paul. Yet before the Banker could do so, he had to arrange for Paul’s deficits and debts to be dealt with.

From God’s perspective, Paul had a huge deficit against his name and a large penalty to pay. The deficit was caused by his failure to keep God’s law perfectly and the penalty was what he incurred in the process, and it was to endure the wrath of God against sin. When the Banker’s Son came into our world, he dealt with both those requirements. He dealt with the failure of Paul to keep God’s commandments by obeying them on behalf of Paul and he dealt with the penalty required of Paul by enduring the wrath of God on the cross. There the Banker’s Son died in the place of the bankrupt.

When and where will Paul be found?

The ‘where’ in which Paul will be found is ‘in Christ’ and the ‘when’ is ‘from his conversion onwards forever’. What does it mean to be in Christ? It basically means that a person is united to Christ, that whatever Jesus has also belongs to those who are connected to him. Remember that Jesus is the Banker’s Son who possesses everything.

The first matter to be considered here is how a person like Paul gets connected to Jesus. From Paul’s perspective, he becomes united to Jesus by faith. When we think about faith, we must realize that it includes believing about Jesus and believing in Jesus. We believe about Jesus when we hear details about him that are recorded for us in the Bible. Through various means we are given information about him and what he has done for bankrupt sinners. The Banker sends another Agent, the Holy Spirit, to enable us to understand the details and leads us to think more and more about what Jesus has to offer.

But there must come a moment when we believe in Jesus. That moment may be a vivid one such as Paul himself experienced when he encountered Jesus in a dramatic manner on the Damascus Road. Or it may be a quiet moment when in the stillness of an occasion we embrace Jesus in a quiet personal way. It may even be a moment that we did not sense at the time, but by looking back we can see that we trusted in Jesus and now belong to him.

When that happens, we are united to Jesus and right away receive many of his riches as the Banker’s Son. To begin with, we are given freely the two matters that we thought about earlier. We receive a bank account that depicts our obedience to God’s law, or righteousness, but the righteousness we are given is the righteousness of Jesus that is imputed to our account. We cannot lose this account, neither does it depreciate in value. It is permanently ours.

At the same time, we discover that the penalty we incurred for all our sins has been paid and we have been pardoned by the Banker, who also happens to be the Judge who could have banished us forever from his presence. Instead we are forgiven, and the Banker promises never to remember our debts again. Now, whenever he checks our account, it is in the best credit possible because the value of Jesus’ work has been given to us, even although we deserved to be punished.

This gift of righteousness will be sufficient when we face the Day of Judgement in the future. We will not get into heaven because of our sanctification. True, there will be rewards given to his people in a gracious way by God. But even the most dedicated servant of Christ will not have a perfect, flawless character. Each one of them will have committed many sins after their conversion – even their holy activities are marred by sin. Therefore they cannot be found in themselves on that great Day. Thankfully, if we trust in Jesus now and receive his righteousness, it will be still ours when we stand before the judgement seat. We will get into heaven because of Jesus.

One example of this is a man very unlike the apostle Paul and that is the criminal on the cross who died beside Jesus. That man believed in Jesus and received his righteousness as his standing and forgiveness because the penalty he was due to pay had been paid. Yet he did not have time and he had very little opportunity to do very much for God as a believer in Jesus. His lack of a life of meaningful service did not keep him out of heaven. Nor did Paul’s life of meaningful service get him into heaven. Both the criminal and Paul got into heaven because the Banker was satisfied that the penalty of their sins had been paid and their accounts made full by Jesus.

The same goes for ourselves. We are bankrupt and deserving of punishment. Jesus offers to us the benefits that he has provided for sinners – a perfect life and an atoning death. If we trust in him, those benefits will become ours. With Horatius Bonar, we will be able to say about today:

Upon I life I did not live,

Upon a death, I did not die;

Another’s life, Another’s death,

I stake my whole eternity.

And with Count Zinzendorf of the Moravians, we will be able say about tomorrow:

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness


My beauty are, my glorious dress;


’Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,


With joy shall I lift up my head.

Bold shall I stand in Thy great day;


For who aught to my charge shall lay?


Fully absolved through these I am,


From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.